Game of Thrones season 7 episode 2 'Stormborn' recap: Rise of the eunuchs

As all about them are losing their heads, the eunuchs rise to the occasion. Mostly.

In the Chamber of the Painted Table, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) is bemoaning the state of the family manse. "I always thought this would be a homecoming," she says of her return to the grey, damp and dusty pile that is Dragonstone. "It doesn't feel like home."

Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) tells her not to worry, they'll turn the place over to the National Trust and skip out on the inheritance tax and the horrendous upkeep and move instead to a lovely little pied-a-terre in King's Landing just as soon as they've toppled his evil sister.

But first, what to do about Lord Varys (Conleth Hill)? His pledge of undying fealty is rather diminished by the fact he has made the same promise to about 63 other would-be rulers of the Seven Kingdoms to date.

"Lord Varys has proven himself a loyal servant," insists Tyrion, conveniently skipping over the fact he not only backed Dany's mad father and her idiot brother, but also tried to have her assassinated.

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"Quite the opposite," she, not unreasonably, snaps back. "If he dislikes one monarch he conspires to crown the next one. What kind of servant is that?"

"The kind the realm needs," spits back Varys, who might equally have said 'the kind who imagines he lives in a democracy, not a fascist military state'. "Incompetence should not be rewarded with blind loyalty."

Varys tells her he was born dirt poor, carved up (he's a eunuch, remember), and sold into slavery. "Handful of cold gravel for breakfast – if we were lucky." His heart belongs not to despots, he says, nor even to Daddy. It belongs to the people.

"Swear this to me Varys – if you ever think I'm failing the people, you won't conspire behind my back, you'll look me in the eye as you have done today and you'll tell me how I'm failing."

"I swear it, my queen."

The dictatorship of the proletariat awaits. Bring it on.

But wait, who's that in the lobby having psychotic visions as she gazes into the candlelight? Why it's Melisandre (Carice Van Houten). Saw your light on, thought I'd pop in.

She's here to share a prophecy, but given past form I wouldn't go setting fire to any kiddies just yet.

"The Long Night is coming," she says, speaking Valyrian, or maybe it's Dutch (they sound so alike). "Only the Prince who was promised can bring the dawn."

Harrumph, says Dany, who was not, last time she checked, a chap.

I have a fleet and three dragons, what could possibly go wrong?

Luckily, Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) is there to help. "Your Grace, forgive me, but your translation is not quite accurate."

It's a risky move, and a little harsh to boot; Dany was only reading the subtitles like the rest of us.

"That noun has no gender in high Valyrian," Missandei continues. "The proper translation would be 'the prince or princess who is promised will bring the dawn'."

"Doesn't really roll off the tongue, does it," Tyrion says.

"No, but I like it better," says Dany, whose abbreviated name, we will note, is similarly gender non-specific. Hmm.

Melisandre tells Dany she should meet Jon Snow, who also has a role to play in the prophecy.

Up in t'North, Jon (Kit Harrington) reads the invitation Tyrion has ravened his way, but Sansa (Sophie Turner) thinks it's a trap. Ser Davos (Liam Cunningham) is in two minds, but he does like the sound of those dragons. "Fire kills wights," he says.

As she prattles on, Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has a quiet word with the nobleman Randyll Tarly (James Faulkner), father of Samwell, telling him if he plays his cards right he could soon be warden of the south. Or whatever is left of it after the coming war.

Tarly asks Jaime if he's met his other son.

"Rickard, isn't it," Jaime says.

"Dickon," says the son (Tom Hopper). Those of us who struggle to remember all those bloody names give a small nod of thanks to Jaime.

Speaking of the Tarlys, here's Sam (John Bradley) at the side of Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen) as he has his annual medical with the Archmaester (Jim Broadbent) in Oldtown.

Sam (John Bradley) and the Archmaester (Jim Broadbent) gather some light holiday reading for the beach.

There's good news and there's bad news. It could be years before the greyscale kills him, Jorah is told. But it might only be six months until he loses his mind.

Were he a commoner, the Archmaester says, he'd send Jorah on his way immediately before he could infect anyone else. But because he's a knight, he'll give him a night. Just long enough, perhaps, to retire to the drawing room and do the honourable thing with the sword that's propped meaningfully in the doctor's surgery, right next to the free pens from Pfizer.

Dany's allies – all of them, it should be noted, women – are gathered at Dragonstone to talk tactics. There's Yara Greyjoy (Gemma Whelan), whose fleet sits in the harbour. There's Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma), still fuming that her lover Oberon died defending Tyrion.

Both want to crack on with it, but Tyrion thinks the battle can be won through popularity rather than bloodshed – as if this were Westeros Idol, not War and Peace – and Daenerys agrees with him. "I am not here to be queen of the ashes," she says, spouting his own pithy one-liner back at him.

All well and good, says Olenna Tyrell (Diana Rigg), but look where being loved by all and sundry got her granddaughter Margaery. "What is left of her now? Ashes. They won't obey you unless they fear you."

Tyrion reveals the cunning plan: a starvation siege of King's Landing and an assault on Casterly Rock, the ancestral home of the Lannisters.

We'll be right back for the bloodshed and carnage, but first, a romantic interlude.

And in a GoT first, today's lovebirds are Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) and Missandei. Now, hands up if you saw that one coming.

Let's get it on: Missandei and Grey Worm let their feelings show – and a bit else besides.

Each confesses to fancying the other and, frankly, who can blame them?

There's nothing for it, Missandei soon realises, but to get her norks out. This isn't season one, though. These days gratuitous GoT nudity demands a bit of tit for tat. So off come Grey Worm's pants in response.

But if you've been paying attention, you'll recall that Grey Worm actually doesn't have any tat – he was castrated, balls and all, at age five. Houston, we have a problem.

Or do we? Though he is, generally speaking, not one to go down without a fight, this time around Mr Worm makes an exception. Turns out he's rather adept with other appendages. Game of Eunuchs, anyone?

Back in Oldtown, Sam thinks he's found a cure for greyscale. "You're not dying today, Ser Jorah," he says. Yay. "This is going to hurt." Not so yay.

He cuts into the scaly skin, which peels away like the outer shell of a boiled egg. Pus oozes out, like a runny brown yolk.

Cut to two geezers in a pub, cutting into the crust of a pie, which oozes gooey stuff; ha-ha, GoT, very funny.

Arya's there, chowing on bread and guzzling ale. She bumps into old mate Hot Pie (Ben Hawkey), and they swap recipes for pie – he always adds butter before baking the crust; she prefers to stick with the more traditional eyeball of Frey – and then they swap news.

She hasn't had reception since the battery on her iPhone went dead back in season five, so she's stunned to hear Jon has taken Winterfell back from the Boltons. Looks like she might not be going to King's Landing to kill Cersei after all.

As you may have gathered by now, this week's episode is brought to you by the letters E (for eunuch) and C (for communications), and so we cut to Jon reading to his followers two messages he's received by e-raven: the invitation to Dragonstone from Tyrion, and the news from Sam that said castle is built on a mountain of dragon glass, the only thing apart from dragonfire that can kill the white walkers.

The case for a visit south has grown irresistible, but Sansa is still unconvinced. "You're abandoning your people, you're abandoning your home," she says.

"I'm leaving both in good hands."

"Whose?"

"Yours. Until I return, the north is yours."

Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) and Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) like the sound of that; Davos doesn't look so sure; a more cynical man than Jon might wonder if he'll ever get his throne back.

In the crypt beneath Winterfell, Baelish admits to Jon that he loved Catelyn Stark, and now he loves her daughter Sansa. "Touch my sister and I'll kill you myself," says an enraged Jon, his fingers tight around Littlefinger's little neck.

You toucha my sister, I breaka you littlefinger.

That wasn't quite the thanks he'd been expecting for sending his troops to Jon's rescue at the Battle of the Bastards. But at least he's still got his wedding tackle.

Unlike Theon (Alfie Allen), our third eunuch, who is aboard his sister Yara's ship, watching on uncomfortably as Ellaria asks if she has a boy in every port. "A boy, a girl," says Yara. "It depends on the port."

That's all the encouragement the Sandy one needs. But just as she's mounting a "foreign invasion" of Yara's nether regions, a real invasion ruins the moment (don't you hate it when that happens?).

It's uncle Euron (Pilou Asbaek).

His name may sound like something that comes out of the bit of Theon last seen in a small wooden box, but he's not piddling around. In a scene straight from Vikings, he lays waste to Ellaria's fighting daughters as well as Yara's entire fleet. Finally, it's just him and Yara, his knife to her throat, his taunts flung at Theon, her sworn protector.

"Come on you cockless coward. I have her. Come and get her."

Not all there: Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy/Reek.

Surrounded by scenes of carnage, Theon visibly gulps. Before our very eyes, he seems to become Reek again, the mutilated, tortured shell of a man he was at the hands of Ramsey Bolton.

Finally he does the only sensible thing a man in his position could do. He jumps into the ocean, leaving big sis to her fate.

Admirable? No. But it might be smart.

Being ballsy doesn't guarantee survival in Game of Thrones. But knowing when to cut and run just might.